A Look Ahead: Thoughts on the 2023 CIF-SS Season

LOS ANGELES, CALIF. - The high school baseball season is just under 30 days away and while there is still a lot of work to be done on the field and analysis off of it, it’s never too early to start thinking about what lies ahead beginning mid-February.

Which teams, which players, which games, what plays will decide the fate of teams as they all work towards a championship at the end of the season. It’s only after watching teams during the fall and into December, in some cases, that you begin to have a sense of what those answers might be. Then after MLK weekend you have a much better feel for what those answers are likely to be. 

It’s easy to get lost in the roster many teams boast, with the way recruiting is nowadays it’s not uncommon to see committed players on lower level high school teams. In many cases that speaks to the depths of rosters at some programs, and to the stockpiling of talent at others. Yet in some cases it's a reflection of the state of recruiting. 

But I digress. 

It’s only after watching teams and how they play together, learning which players will fill depth roles, seeing the pitchers that are going to eat innings and which are going to lead from out front, that’s when you get a sense of teams. The ability to play into December then pick up in mid-January is certainly helpful to onlookers in helping build an opinion of teams. 

Regardless of what anybody thinks they know about how the season will end up, you still have to win the final game, and as we all know, in many sections across the CIF, that means a one-and-done scenario in the postseason. And while the CIF and its partnering sections have devised what appears to be the framework for an eventual state championship, a true state champion appears to be a few years away. 

THE MARCH TO A TITLE

Many argue that the CIF-SS D1 baseball title is the hardest championship to win in high school sports in the state of California. If nothing, that’s a topic for good fodder. However, knowing that you’ll likely be facing a college level and, very often, a draft arm every game in the postseason along with the aforementioned format, it makes the postseason often gut wrenching for the participants and incredibly exciting for an onlooker.

The one-and-done format of the playoffs, largely due to the number of high school baseball teams in the Southern Section, is a brutal reality of high school baseball in SoCal. One that coaches have bemoaned for years and one that doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. 

However, despite the playoff format, we usually have the best teams playing for the biggest prize in their sport. Rarely do we have a double digit playoff seed find itself in the finals. Usually we see the programs in the finals that we anticipated would be there, and that’s not really a bad thing.

Given the quality of coaches we have in the Southern Section, and across the state for that matter, it’s not hard to have a good feeling about a program going into a season. And while transfers are now playing a much bigger role in roster formulation for some programs, it’s rare to see a program come out of nowhere to make a run. Rare, but not impossible, particularly in the lower divisions. 

If the 2022 season is any indication, we are in for a special treat in 2023.

Last season we saw JSerra start off about as poorly as possible before catching fire and riding that to a CIF-SS title. We saw Etiwanda, a program with a rich tradition of success, make a run to their own CIF-SS title. We saw Newport Harbor come out of nowhere and win a CIF-SS title. We saw Fullerton, another history rich program, make an incredible run through the regular and postseason.

The 2022 season also introduced us to many underclassmen that will be common names in the region in a year or two, many of whom are already household names in the baseball community. 

But, most importantly, the 2022 season reminded us of how lucky we are to live where we do because the baseball talent, and the depth of that talent, in Southern California is incomparable anywhere in the country. I know I’ll catch some flack for that last sentence, but it is my opinion that California, the state with the most Big Leaguers in 2022, is in fact the best state for high school baseball. 

With so many teams returning a large core of their roster from last year - JSerra returns just about everybody! - it’s easy to sit here in mid-January and pick who is going to be the best team. Of course, championships aren’t won in January. Instead it’s only after a few weeks, even months, into the season that the picture becomes clearer in regards to the top teams in the region. 

And even with a clearer picture, the view is sometimes blurred. Games are played on the field and not on paper, and when you factor in the fact that these are high school boys playing baseball, anything can and usually does happen. 

The 2023 season comes as most, with more questions than answers. With so much still unknown, one can only wait for the answers to come. And while some answers will come soon, others will take longer to reveal themselves. And while the wait can seem endless, the reality is that we are under 30 days away from baseball games counting towards league, division, area, and section championships. 

And in those 30 or so days we’ll learn so much as we kick off the season with the PBR California Preseason Invitational. The 16 team field is set to play a bracketed tournament with the championship to be held at the Great Park Stadium on Tuesday, 21 2023. The first big championship of the season will be handed out ten days after the season starts which will lead to even more questions; the cycle doesn’t end until it does,  with a team hoisting their respective division and section’s trophy. 

And until the final out of the season is made, we are all left with questions that we’ll take a look at in part two of A Look Ahead.